Date: Wed, 27 May 1998 18:01:04 +0200
Subject: Re:  Self-evidently so ...


Cologne, 27 May 1998

Mike Staples schrieb:
> Michael, does one's interpretation of the term "God" make any difference
> here? Isn't there a mapping of one's thinking of being back into
> two-thousand-year-old ruts only if the interpretation of "God" is from
> that two-thousand-year-old tradition?

Yes, Michael, it does make a difference, and God or godliness has to be thought 
and experienced anew from the thinking of being, but such rethinking does not 
mean by any means that the term God could be substituted for being, since the 
former remains a being, no matter how it is thought about. 

> On another note, why would Steiner say what he did about substituting
> the term "God" for "Being", then turn right around and make the
> statement about two-thousand-year-old ruts in thinking??

I was misleading. Steiner does not actually talk about the ruts in thinking, but 
only makes use of them implicitly. We find it easier to think in terms of a 
supreme being that pervades all, is in our hearts and watches over us, etc. 

> But, then, why not just use the term Being? The term "God"
> already has a meaning of its own.

And it is not at all easy to redefine any term that is so drenched in history 
and weighed down by tradition. 

Thinking about the openness, truth, _alaetheia_ and so on is so difficult 
because it is so simple. Being is really nothing. Because being is so smooth it 
does not provide any notches to get a foothold on, so that substituting God for 
being seems to make everything "pellucid". Such substitution may immediately 
provide a "sense", but this sense lies in an utterly different direction from 
the thinking of the truth of being. The play of the world in all the nuances of 
truth is a subtle experience.

Cheers,
Michael
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